Why do we bother making art?

It’s a question that haunts me. According Maslow, art should be something that we only bother with once we have secure housing, food supply, love, care, and support…and yet. And yet—there is something so patently untrue about this. Art is made despite a lack of these things; often because of that lack.

John Green, discussing the Lascaux Caves, says in his excellent book, ‘The Anthropocene Reviewed’:

The paintings were made a time in early human history, when every healthy and capable person would have needed to contribute to the basic survival of themselves and their clan. And yet, still made art. Almost as if art is essential…

In a book I talk a lot about, ‘Art and Fear,’ David Bayles and Ted Orland say:

Through most of history, the people who made art never thought of themselves as making art. In fact it’s quite presumable that art was being made long before the rise of consciousness, long before the pronoun “I” was ever employed. The painters of caves, quite apart from not thinking of themselves as artists, probably never thought of themselves at all. What this suggests, among other things, is that the current view equating art with “self-expression” reveals more a contemporary bias in our thinking than an underlying trait of the medium.

Motivations for making art are more complicated today than they ever were, because of money and media, which has turned art into a tradable commodity. Even 200 years ago, it was less complicated. Art was so tied up for the most part with the Church that the ‘purpose’ for it was clear: art was in the service of God, not in the service of oneself.

Bayles and Orland again:

Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward.

While that may be true, there is a paradox at the heart of this – we make art for our own “self-expression”, but it is still a political act. There is still a social value not just in a good product, but in the act of doing something that does not equate neatly to a limited notion of value that reduces people to dollar value.

By Scott Wrigg. Instagram: @scottwrigg

I make art (in my case, writing songs, writing articles, and making videos) for a curdle of reasons. Yes, it’s self-expression. It’s also a way to make money (at least part of it, but all the other ways I make money rely on the very fact that I’m an active songwriter, so in essence, entirely to make a living). But it’s also something more. It’s a contradiction. I would (and do) write songs regardless of whether I would make money from them. I do it as an almost aggressively spiritual act. The kind of ‘muscular’ spiritual act that I think Krista Tippett talks about on her podcast, On Being (one of my all-time favourite podcasts, by the way). It’s not spiritual in the sense of touching the ‘divine’. It’s spiritual in the sense of the painfully awkward act of doing something in the face of uncertainty; uncertain of the very reasons why I do it.

I have started to read ‘The Practice’ by Seth Godin, and was moved when I read:

Let’s call it art. The human act of doing something that might not work, something generous, something that will make a difference. The emotional act of doing personal, self-directed work to make a change that we can be proud of. We each have more leverage than ever before. We have access to tools, a myriad of ways forward, and a real chance to contribute. Your part matters. Your art matters.

Art matters. I’m not sure why it does. But it really, really does.

The 3 Things I Did This Year to Write Over 20 Songs

In this video, I share the three pillars of my creative practice that ensure I write even when not inspired, and have given me the structure to write over 20 songs this year.

Producing lots of creative work is more often about the habits, practices, and environments that we build, rather than about inspiration alone. These three practices give me the structures to stay connected to my ideas and projects, to know EXACTLY what I need to do if I am stuck on an idea or need to generate new ideas, and to ensure I have some accountability to get the work done.

More videos on my YouTube Channel, here.

Can you learn to be obsessed?

There is so much advice out there for writers about the importance of habit and ritual in your creative practice. But lately, I have become—frankly—a little suspect of it.

The insistence on habit as the conduit of creative output is embodied by the American painter Chuck Close, who famously said, “Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

John Cleese gave an extraordinary lecture in the 90s, talking about the vital importance of carving out 90 minutes for creative work. Don’t leave the chair after 30 minutes. The first 30 minutes are basically the opening credits. Nothing happens. Nothing is meant to happen. All the action comes after 30 minutes. The key message here was that creativity is not a special talent, but a discipline.

But I often wonder if this ‘advice’ isn’t really advice at all. It’s more of an observation of what highly productive, creative people tend to do. By framing it as advice, it assumes a causal direction: that if I sit everyday and apply myself to my creative practice, that something will happen. It’s prescriptive. 

But there is a line between what is prescriptive and what is descriptive, and I think the two often get confused. Someone can describe what they did to get where they got, and then offer that as some kind of prescriptive method for others, even though it would never work if you weren’t that person, with their passion, their motivation, their invisible networks and threads of connection to others who move their careers along.

I think it’s important to add in a detail here. As Austin Kleon puts it, persistence is much easier “when there’s obsession behind it. (And likewise, discipline is much easier when it’s fueled by desire.)” It’s not habit that drives creative work; it’s obsession. The chain of causation begins with that drive, that motivation, not with the habit itself. The habit is an outcropping of the obsession; it’s a necessary extension of it. It’s a vehicle to cultivate and harvest that obsession, but there has to be obsession at the root. 

The question then becomes: can you learn obsession? Can you practice it? Is passion a feature of disposition, or like so many things, is there a range in which we each individually fall by genetics and circumstance, and our effortful acts of will can only move us around within those limits?

Creativity as a physical act

At the beginning of this year, I joined the gym. Again. I was more optimistic about it this time, since both of my kids were now in daycare a few days a week, so I had a bit more time.

At the same time, I was actively working on songwriting projects with and for other artists and bands. Most are in genres that are not my natural comfort zone, so I decided to listen to playlists of music in those genres while working out.

And I had the most astounding experience:

All of my best and most creative ideas came to me while working out at the gym. There is a magical alchemy in the combination of listening to music, thinking about songwriting, and having oxygen pumping through my brain. There is also something going on with doing bilateral physical action that seems to connect and synthesize cognitive processes in a way that I don’t ever experience when I sit down at my desk, trying very diligently to “be creative.”

BonjourThis ‘surprise’ really shouldn’t have been a surprise at all. Tom Waits is often visited by ideas while driving—or rolling around near the garbage (listen at 40:00); the shower is good too. John Mayer once told a group of us at Berklee that he would get up and take a walk at the moment when he felt a surge of a great idea coming to him.

So the idea of it isn’t a surprise, but the very real experience of it is. And it has made all the difference for me in keeping me motivated to exercise. As a time-poor person (aren’t we all…), I have not been great at making time for exercise. But now, when I go to the gym, I’m not constantly trying to dissuade myself due to lack of time; but (usually) keen to go and get my best creative work done for the day.

photo credit: Fresh on the Net

What Can Business Learn from Songwriters?

I was kindly invited by Soren Trampedach and Work Club Global, in collaboration with the Sydney-based organisation Affectors, to present an information session on some of the Screen Shot 2016-07-15 at 4.13.55 pmcraft and process of a songwriter and musician. The audience were entrepreneurs and culture creators. The discussion that came about found fascinating interplays between language in song and language in all types of communication.

An excerpt is provided below, but you can read the whole article and listen to the discussion by clicking HERE.

Keppie played with language, testing us all on our ability to recall certain words, she shared the theory and the practice of song craft and she played some beautiful indie folk tunes that were open to interpretation.

And in the space of 2 hours, relaxing on a lounge enjoying wine and cheese, I learned three business relevant insights:

1. We must show people what we mean, rather than tell them, even if it’s with their imagination. We can do this by painting a picture with words that our audience can relate to.

2. Sense based language is far more memorable than task orientated words. When I talk about a strategy and use words like ‘approach’ and ‘task’ they don’t stay in the mind as easily as nouns (Keppie proved this with an audience participation experiment). So I’m going to re-evaluate my language and look to bring more colour to ‘strategic dialogue’ in future.

3. Evocative words, memorable language, losing yourself in the music – all of these create an experience in music that’s carefully crafted around notes, but also silences, pauses and spaces. We can be afraid of silence and so keen to fill it – but what if we don’t? What if we allow people to create meaning and to connect with us in the same way they connect with a piece of music. Wouldn’t this allow us to have far more interesting relationships?

Eagle Rock Fall Songwriters Retreat

 

EAGLE ROCK SONGWRITERS RETREAT – OCTOBER 8 2011

 

Former Berklee Songwriting faculty Keppie Coutts presents the Eagle Rock Fall Songwriters Retreat on Sunday, October 8!

 

Fall Retreat will involve a series of creative exercises and time-proven writing techniques in the morning, equipping you with processes to bring your unique perspective and voice to the page. The afternoon will consist of song listening and feedback, giving you insight into the tools, techniques and strategies used by professional songwriters to generate ideas, develop, revise, edit, and fine-tune their songs. Fall Retreat will be a small and focused group, building strong connections, community, empowering participants to develop their creative processes and write the best songs possible!

 

In order to keep the retreat focused, the group is limited to 10 people, on a first come first served basis. REGISTER TODAY to secure your spot, by visiting www.kcsongstudio.com or by emailing kcsongstudio@gmail.com.

 

COST:

$80 Early Bird Discount (signed up by September 15)
$100 (after September 15)
$90 (Member Affiliations – West Coast Songwriters, Berklee Alum, previous attendees)

 

The Whole Brain Process

In 1968, a psychologist called Roger W. Sperry published his groundbreaking study that showed that the two hemispheres of the human brain – the left and the right – process information in very distinct ways. Since then, there has been a lot of research and interest in left-brain and right-brain theories, and how this relates to creativity.

One thing is for sure – songwriting is a Whole Brain process. It requires you to access your ‘right brain’ mode of cognition, when you are gathering ideas, making connections, being inspired, finding out what the deeper meaning of your work is, or even letting your subconscious figure out the right word, image or line.

It also requires you to access the ‘left brain’ mode, when you putting your ideas into a structure, making decisions about rhyme scheme and meter, cutting out lines, switching verses, rewriting melodies, testing out different points of view, checking for consistency in your tenses, and cutting out all the times you use the words ‘just’ or ‘really’ in your song!

Most of us relate to one part of the process more than the other. We might be ‘right-brain’ dominant, and find it really easy to get inspired, to have lists of beautiful images, to spill something heartfelt onto the page. Or we might be more ‘left-brain’ oriented – deciding on a song form early on, setting the meter or melody early and challenging ourselves to find word combinations that sit within that structure, choosing and interesting, challenging, and unusual rhyme scheme from the start.

Either way, at some point, we need to engage with all of it, and that is what ‘songwriting is’ – it is inspiration and imagination within a structure and a pattern.

For more reading about left-brain and right-brain cognition in the creative process, I recommend these books:

  • ‘Songwriting and the Creative Process’, by Steve Gillette (Chapter 7)
  • Sheila Davis has written about these topics in ‘Successful Lyric Writing’ and ‘The Songwriter’s Idea Book’.
  • ‘Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain’, Betty Edwards.